Servitization and productization: two faces of the same coin?

The companies of our time compete in what can be defined as “Customer Economy”, where it no longer makes sense to distinguish between tangible and intangible goods. Satisfying the customer is the mission and purpose of every business. In order to survive in this new scenario, companies – both product- and service-centered – have to reinvent themselves by offering an integrated solution to the customer in order to fully satisfy his needs (i.e., a Product-Service System) through the adoption of new strategies, namely: product servitization and service productization. Despite servitization having already been discussed in-depth by scholars, little has been said on productization. Thus, due to the ongoing convergence and integration between sectors, an integrative view of these topics seems to be necessary. Through a thematic analysis of the relevant literature (identified by a Systematic Literature Review), the purpose of this paper is to identify potential common themes between servitization and productization in order to verify if the two topics could be considered – or not – as “two faces of the same coin”. This study aims to systematize and analyze current literature on servitization and productization, through the application of a Systematic Literature Review. The literature review process will follow the steps suggested by Tranfield et al. (2003); thus, a three-stage procedure will be applied (i.e., planning, conducting and reporting). In particular, the reporting section will be divided in two sub-stages: 1) a descriptive analysis to provide, through the use of graphics, simple summaries of the relevant literature (Sandelowski, 2000), such as time-line, geographical and journal distribution of the papers in the dataset; and 2) a thematic analysis to identify key themes between papers, in order to provide the major findings of the Systematic Literature Review. The Systematic Literature Review and the Thematic Analysis will provide an integrative framework based on the relevant articles on servitization and productization that will be retrieved. In particular, the review will offer the possibility to understand the state-of-the-art related to the topics; while the thematic analysis will help to understand if they should be considered as “two faces of the same coin”. The study results could be important both for scholars and practitioners. The former should see the possibility to develop a new theoretical framework, based on a holistic view of the presented topics. The latter should recognize new opportunities in order to better satisfy customers’ needs.